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Saturday, April 25, 2015

#87: Pillars of Eternity: New Solutions to Old Problems

On
numerous occasions, I have cited a dislike of most of the old
Infinity Engine RPGs. In particular, Baldur's Gate and its sequel
were not very enjoyable. If not for my prior experience with their
contemporaries, like Planescape: Torment and the early Fallout games,
it would have been extremely tempting to swear myself off of the
genre entirely. However, the recent renaissance of cRPGs, from
Shadowrun Returns and Wasteland 2 to the upcoming Torment: Tides of
Numeria, has brought a new perspective. Recently, Obsidian released
Pillars of Eternity, which used those classics as inspiration. In
doing so, it highlights many of their problems and proposes some
interesting solutions to solving them.

The most
obvious improvements Pillars of Eternity made to the systems of its
predecessors are in the UI. None of them are major changes, but they
all fix some of the more legendary problems that Baldur's Gate and
its sequel were notorious for. For example, almost anyone who played
those games will recoil in horror if one tells them that “you must
gather your party before venturing forth.” Because of how slow
characters moved, players could spend upwards to several minutes
getting every single member of their group to the exit so that they
can transition to the next area. Though that may not seem like a lot
of time, when compounded over the sheer number of area changes, it is
possible to spend hours in in-game time just waiting for the party to
get into position. Should enemies still remain on the map, it will
even be necessary to manually guide the party to the exit, else they
will accidentally walk straight into battles, further slowing process
down. The sheer tediousness of this exercise was, at my most
charitable, mind-numbing to the extreme.

Pillars
of Eternity fixes this issue in two ways. Although it stills used the
memetic phrase, the game will automatically begin the process of
bringing every party member to the point of transition the moment the
player attempts to move to the next location, saving them from
tediously selecting each member and moving them manually. On top of
that, there is a “fast-movement” mode players can enable to
accelerate the flow of time, minimizing the real-world wait for the
party to gather. Though this is far from the only example of such
improvements, it serves as a good demonstration of how Pillars of
Eternity opted to do more than just reiterate old mechanics without
considering how they may be improved.

Another
major difference between Baldur's Gate and Pillars of Eternity was in
the fighting. Back in the old days, Baldur's Gate utilized a Real
Time with Pause combat system. This meant that characters
theoretically acted in real time, requiring players to pause the
action in order to coordinate tactics, but upon closer inspection
reveals this is not entirely true. Though allies and enemies will
only act with the passage of time, in truth the game utilizes
turn-based mechanics under the hood. During long, protracted fights,
I began to notice that my party and the opposition were repeated
launching spells and attacks in the same order, no unit acting while
another was in the middle of their own move. Baldur's Gate 2 makes
this even more obvious by giving players the option to auto-pause the
game after each round of combat.

In terms
of play, this uncomfortable blend of turn-based play and real time
combat offers the worse of both worlds. Turn-based mechanics work
because they allow players to take their time and make meaningful,
tactical decisions. Without the threat of enemies attacking, it is
possible to better consider all possible options before the enemy
gets their turn. On the other hand, real time systems focus on the
moment-to-moment action. These systems are often built to test
quick-thinking and reflex, the goal being to make smart decisions and
act on them swiftly. Tactics are important, but they not as strongly
emphasized.

With the
way Baldur's Gate combined the aspects of these two design
philosophies, players have the slow speed of a turn-based game with
the need to reflexively, quickly pause after every single action in
order to avoid giving away any advantage. Many time in the game, I
found that if I did not pause after an enemy attack, my cleric might
either launch a low-damage attack, or worst, do nothing at all. When
several characters require immediate healing, this often spelled the
difference between success and failure.

Pillars
of Eternity fixes this in two ways. Instead of a rigid turn/round
system, the game relies on cooldowns between attacks. Characters with
lighter equipment and/or greater speed will be able to act faster and
more frequently than their slower counterparts. Not only does this
make party and equipment setups more interesting, but it solves the
problem where players are using real time thinking and reflexes on a
fundamentally turn-based system. An extremely robust array of
auto-pause options also serves to benefit this system. By enabling
them, players can force the game to pause on specific events like one
character finishing an ability, getting low on health, or even
something as simple as the start of a battle. As a result, players
can rely on the game handling that aspect on its own, meaning they
can focus on the action without having a thumb over the Space Bar at
all times.

The
balance of short-term versus long-term resource management is also
different between the two games. As is the case with most RPGs,
Baldur's Gate gives each character a set number of hit points. Once
those hit points reach zero, they are killed unless a resurrection
spell brings them back to life. In order to recover from damage,
players could either use healing magic, or allocate time to resting
in a place where no enemies are lurking. Theoretically, this meant
that players could spend as much time as they wanted in the
wilderness, before heading back into town. So long as they
continuously found safe locations, or cleared out areas, any health
could simply be recovered by resting. The only potential long-term
consequences to doing so are inventory space and party member death.
Because of this, battles were either be a total blowout or extreme
tough, without any middle ground. Whenever one of those tough battles
is finished, resting also became the only logical option so that the
party can recover.

Pillars
of Eternity uses a different system. Each party member has two pools
which get used in battle. Like any other game, each character has
health, with represents long-term damage. However, Endurance is
another statistic that comes into play. Acting as a shield of sorts,
Endurance will soak up most, but not all, of the damage during a
fight and is restored at the end of a battle. Should it ever reach
zero, the character is knocked out, unable to participate in the
fight any longer. Should their health instead drop to zero, they are
permanently killed off. This allowed Obsidian to balance each fight
so that it will pose a good challenge to a reasonably-leveled party,
while also limiting the overall impact of any single engagement on
the player's long-term survivability.

Health
is completely restored on rest, just like in Baldur's Gate. However,
this is balanced by the fact that resting outside of an inn costs a
camping set. At any given time, only six camping sets can be in the
player's inventory, meaning that their supply will always be limited.
The difficulty is in balancing the desire to travel around and
complete quests with the necessity to conserve supplies and visit
town in order to restock. After fighting a series of battles, finding
that the party is tired, health running low, the game always tempts
the player to see if they willing to go for one more battle without
rest in order to best conserve their inventory. Unlike Baldur's Gate,
the decision of when to rest and when not to rest becomes just as
much of a tactical choice then anything other combat-related
decision.

Pillars
of Eternity is not just a loving tribute to Baldur's Gate. Rather, it
is a modern take on the game design principles inherent to the old
school cRPGs of that era. Given this lens, it is easy to see how
Obsidian was able to improve upon those old systems and create
something new from them. I am happy this genre is making a comeback.
With all that has been learned in the time since the era of Baldur's
Gate, there is huge potential for this genre to develop more than it
ever could have in its heyday.

2 comments:

Aldowyn
said...

Huh, Disqus seems to think I have my old twitter avatar? Ah well.

Anyways, I definitely agree with basically all of this. Not exactly controversial to say that Baldur's Gate's UI was terrible. The bits about the combat are worth discussing, though - I particularly think your point about allowing engagements to be balanced differently due to the health/endurance system was spot on.

Lots of things like that make this game feel more like it was designed to be a video game instead of hacking a system fundamentally designed for tabletop to kinda-sorta-not-really work on a computer. I played on easy for the most part, so I didn't exactly dive deep into the tactics of the combat, but it seems pretty well done, if not totally free of the micro-management nature almost inherent to the genre. Certainly enjoyed playing my cipher!